The biotechnology sector relies upon organisms such as E. coli as hosts for the generation of desired biomolecules (e.g, recombinant DNA, proteins, natural products, etc.) as well as for the study of biological processes and the development of bio-based technologies and products. While advances in fields such as genomics, synthetic biology, and genome/metabolic engineering have made possible projects at an unprecedented scale, the host organisms that the field relies upon have changed relatively little in decades and are proving to be inadequate or inefficient for many ambitious projects.
E. coli has been the main prokaryotic workhorse for several decades, being used ubiquitously in both academic and industrial efforts, and relied upon as a host for molecular cloning, protein expression, metabolic engineering, a source of cellular extracts for in vitro molecular biology, and as a chassis for synthetic biology efforts. The use of E. coli is due largely to its extensive characterization (having served as a model organism since the late 19th century), having a large collection of standardized tools and protocols, and being relatively easy to work with. E. coli is certainly not the only organism in use in biotechnology, as there are plenty of obscure organisms being utilized, usually to leverage some peculiar biological property that allows that organism to excel in some niche application, but E. coli is hands down the most widely adopted and broadly applied bacterial species in biotechnology.
There is a need for robust, faster growing, and easily genetically manipulated bacterial cells that can be used as host organisms, especially to produce products such as large recombinant DNA molecules, and as alternative hosts for protein and peptide expression.